On-going goings-on

I think this might be a low-post week due to busyness, but then again it might be a high-post week due to having pictures and reports on the busyness. We'll see how that goes.

Plans:

Tomorrow night is The Writers' Trust Awards ceremony. Despite being in a totally different venue than it was two years ago, and thus causing me a little brain-on-fire here-is-not-there moment, I still think it will a lovely event. There will be literary repartee of canapes and fancy drinks, there will be entertaining speeches (at least, last time I attended, almost everyone spoke remarkably well, and briefly), there will be a *lot* of prize money handed out. And there will be me, in a *dress that I ironed* (what I wouldn't do for literature) helping McLelland & Stewart's fiction editor Anita Chong announce The Journey Prize 21. Yay for all long-listers, short-listers, and of course, the soon-to-be-known winner (guess who is very excited not to have to keep a secret anymore??)

Then on Wednesday morning, I get to get up very early to go out to University of Toronto at Scarborough to give a lecture of my stories. I'm going to direct my comments mainly towards the last story in *Once*, "Massacre Day," which is one of the ones the students are studying. It's also a story I've never done a reading from and since the audience has all (allegedly) read the piece, I'm free to read from any point in the piece. I think I might take this unprecedented opportunity to read the ending. But what I am looking forward to most is a discussion with students. It never fails to amaze me when people offer me insightful, thoughtful, utterly accurate interpretations of my work that I never thought of. Can't wait.

Wednesday evening will find me at Ben McNally's for the Biblioasis Poetry Bash, appreciating three poets imported to Toronto for the occasion. Should be outstanding--see you there?

So, if this is it for postage for a few days, I would like to leave you with these lines from the song "The New World" by The Burning Hell:

My world would be a place where everyone would play the saxophone
But never soprano saxophone
Only tenor and baritone
Then a drum and a trumpet and a rusty old French horn
Would play a solo and make us shake our little bones

RR